An e-learning seminar (September – December 2018) dedicated to long-distance artistic collaborations between young artists from Zurich/Switzerland (ZHdK) and Almaty/Kazakhstan (School of Artistic Gesture). The seminar culminates in a bi-local exhibition, taking place in Almaty and Zurich at the same time in the second half of December 2018.
Overcoming Dialogue in Shared Practice
Dialogue
is a problematic term, by any means. It’s superficial and more of an
abstract container for different meanings. In most cases, it’s used to
mark a rather optimistic expectation for the outcome of an encounter,
while being a deeply risky and uncertain undertaking. Therefore, we
would like to explore the term in vivo, in medias res of situations of
collaboration: its empirical uncertainties, overwhelming complexities,
irritating expectations of attempts to get along with each other.
In this collaboration, artists from Zurich and Almaty will be paired and will engage in a shared artistic practice.
The challenge is to create an artwork together without meeting in person.
The
means for the creation of this artwork and the artistic collaboration
are not restricted and up to the collaborators themselves.
These
can be telephone conversations, skype-calls, instant-messenger
correspondence (WhatsApp-like chats), shared (written or visual) diaries
or blogs, but also instructions for performative action (non-verbal),
printing, sound-recordings or just having breakfast together while being
in different places (times?), and many, many more.
In
order to open up the opaque and abstract term “dialogue” and to think
about relevant dimensions of the long-distance collaborations, the
seminar will deal with a selection of sub-topics, such as
contemporaneity (in the arts), borders, digitality, in/dividuality,
distance, original/copy, histories and fictions.
Seminar Sessions
(1) Tue. 25.09.2018 // 14:00-16:30 (Zurich time) | 18:00-20:30 (Almaty time)
(2) Tue. 09.10.2018 // 14:00-16:30 (Zurich time) | 18:00-20:30 (Almaty time)
(3) Tue. 23.10.2018 // 14:00-16:30 (Zurich time) | 18:00-20:30 (Almaty time)
(4) Tue. 13.11.2018 // 14:00-16:30 (Zurich time) | 19:00-21:30 (Almaty time)
(5) Tue. 27.11.2018 // 14:00-16:30 (Zurich time) | 19:00-21:30 (Almaty time)
(6) Tue. 11.12.2018 // 14:00-16:30 (Zurich time) | 19:00-21:30 (Almaty time)
Exhibition
Preparation: 14.-16.12.2018
Exhibition (Zurich): 17.-21.12.2018
Exhibition (Almaty): 17.12.2018 – t.b.a.